CreteJun 20, 2012
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seaside Iraklio
Frescoes in Knosses 8700 yrs old
Bldg with Frescoes in Knosses
| CRETE: We took the overnight ferry from Rhodes to Crete arriving in IRAKLIO at 5:50 am. Iraklio is the biggest city on this island. There’s not a lot open at that hour of the morning so we had a taxi drop us at a coffee shop in the center of town where we stayed until about 8:00am when we started the hunt for our hotel. Iraklio is a really interesting place. We took 3 long walks around various parts of the city and found some interesting parks, monuments and old ruins. Visited KNOSSES, a 6700 BC Neolithic settlement…ever neat! The frescoes are still quite beautiful. Amazing ruins 8700 yrs old!! Hard to fathom life way back then. Our main mission in Crete was to hike a couple of gorges. We took a bus to HANIA, a very pretty seaside town, where we planned our first hike being the SAMARIA GORGE. What beautiful landscape! An amazing hike approx.16 kms in length, very rugged, great scenery…loved it even though our feet were tired of several kms of riverbed walking. We met up with a couple of young girls from Calgary & a young man from Edmonton. Us old folks faired as well as they did…maybe even better! Mind you, they were carrying heavy packs. At the end of the hike we took a 1 hr ferry ride to Chora Sfakion and then a 20 min.taxi ride to the tiny village, Anapolis, to be near our next day hike starting point. Tourist information in Hania had not told us that this was a Greek long weekend! NO accommodation was available, so we had to hire a ride back to Chora Sfakion, stay the night and hire another ride the next morning to begin our hike of Ardena Gorge. Blew 50 Euros of our budget!! The ARADENA GORGE hike was also wonderful.. We were the only ones on the trail until almost the end. This was a more relaxed hike with absolutely breathtaking scenery! The gorges are soooo deep…it is quite awesome!! We arrived at a little swimming area, relaxed a bit and then walked/hiked to the very pretty white & blue village of Lutra to meet the ferry that took us back to Chora Sfakion to meet our bus back to Iraklio. A great couple of great days!! We feel energized after doing some physical activities and realize we should be doing more…will see as time goes on!! |
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